Cross-Dressing in Shakespeares Twelfth Night and As You Like It Essay

Cross-Dressing in Shakespeares Twelfth nighttime and As You Like It In Shakespeares plays Twelfth Night and As You Like It both of the lead wo humanly characters dress as men. Both plays are comedies and the change in sexual activity is used as a joke, but I think it goes untold deeper. A woman can become a man, but only if it is not permanent. The affect of the change cannot be too great because she moldiness change back to young-bearing(prenominal) once everything is settled. They are strong female characters, but must become men to protect themselves and ultimately work up the problem of the play. In the book Desire and Anxiety The Circulation of Sexuality in Shakespearian Drama Valerie Traub calls the characters, the crossed-dressed heroine who elicits and enjoys multiple erotic investments (Traub 17). They can only acts this charge when they are dressed as men. They return to their passive and nonsexual ship canal when they change back to womens clothing. In both pla ys the women are not in their own shores, Viola being shipwrecked on a strange land and Rosalind being banished from the court and wandering in the forest. Both women disguise themselves as men for protection. On the way to the forest Celia says to Rosalind, Now go we in content/ To liberty and not to banishment (1.3.137-138). Liberty in this telephone circuit is the freedom they get overcoming the restrictions of a female role (Erikson 22). Dressing as a man is the way the women protect themselves, but as the plays onward motion the roles they play as men begin to influencing their actions and attitudes. The definition of a man by what he wears is so strong that in Twelfth Night Orsino still refers to Viola as her male name Cersario even aft(prenominal) he learns she is a woman and decides to marry her. Cersario, come/ F... ...e roles are right. custody are manly taking care of their women by marrying them and women are in their correct roles under their husbands.Works Cited Erickson, Peter. Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeares Drama. Los Angeles University of atomic number 20 Press, 1985.Greenblatt, Stephen general ed. Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eiasman Maus eds. The Norton Shakespeare. New York W.W. Norton and Company, 1997.Orgel, Stephen. Impersonations The Performance of Gender In Shakespeares England. Cambridge University Press, 1996.Traub, Valerie. Desire and Anxiety Circulation of Sexuality in Shakespearian Drama. London Routledge, 1992.Notes more(prenominal) of the definition of a females role in Shakespearean England can be found at http//drama.pepperdine.edu/shakespeare/romeoandjuliette in the essay female person Sovereignty in Renaissance England.